Been using this template for quite some time now and it's improved my planning so much, but one thing I've added is a page for solely random tables. Whenever my players reach a new major location or environment I'll spend half an hour making a random table of random flavor events that can occur when I need a prompt to make travel or downtime more interesting, and it's great to just have a page I can flick to easily.
Hi Mike! I've loved using this template for planning my sessions for the last year or two. A couple of changes I've made that you might find interesting: I changed each heading to be a Toggle Heading, so I can collapse sections when I'm not using them and can quickly get to what I need. I also gave each page an icon using emoji, which I just find visually more pleasing. In one of my campaigns, I also set up the campaign database with different views for NPCs, Locations, Items, etc, rather than making separate pages with custom views. It allowed me to find what I wanted faster, and without leaving the page. Take or leave any of these suggestions as you see fit. As always, thanks for the great resources!
I just started using this in preparing for a new campaign I am starting soon. One thing I changed was the Character section. My group doesn't use D&D Beyond, we play using Roll20 and Discord only. So, the link column went. With that gone, I also realized that for me, reviewing the characters includes race and class/subclass/level. So, I added two columns, one for race, and another for class. This gives me all the things I think I'll need to review my player's characters as we play.
Stumbled across this template a couple months ago and have been using it for my current campaign. It's been a lifesaver and let's me run most of my game from my phone if I need to
This is my weekend sorted! I'm reaching the end of the first arc in my first campaign as a DM; the players are just about to finish the Sunless Citadel. Along with re-reading the Lazy books, I wanted to re-compile my notes ahead of the next arc and this tool & template look perfect. Thanks Mike!
It’s Mike’s fault I use Notion! Like most everything he recommends, it really helps plan and link tremendously! I’ll never go back to word for notes again!
I've been using your template for my last 60 D&D sessions. It's my third campaing using notion and is awesome. I also used your template for my worldbuilding, I'v added a Factions and Gods folder and removed the session notes, it's very useful, I'm not into complex tools with lot's of documents and configs, simple notion databases ans folder strucutre are great.
@@worldwalkers so in the table that you have for your players. I added a new column for their tool proficencies (like the one for languages and skills) and typed them in manually
@@chasemarkart6592 Thanks for the response! I’ve been doing database stuff on notion the past few days so I understand what you mean by “multi-select property” haha. Good idea!!
Hey Mike, I know my DM is currently looking for a new method to improve campaign management. So I send him your videos on Notion. It fits perfectly. One question remained open - how can you provide information easily to your players. It seems Notion does not offer quick access to information based on rights management. How do you do provide material and information to your players?
In a previous video you said you wished you added villains to your template? Where do you keep that? I added a Villains page but I feel like I agree they should just be in NPCs. My notes are getting to clunky. I guess my real questions are how do you keep track of Fronts/villains? Do you add info to your villain page as things change in the game?
I have a question on encounter benchmarks... Some people say something crazy like they are bassed on 6 encounters a day- but they don't have to be combat encounters. So any one encounter may qualify for Deadly. So, when you have 4 characters, are we assuming that they (between 4 of them) have around 12 limited resources (things that come back on a short or long rest) and two are spent each encounter. I have a character that is underplayed. They are just trying to "Cantrip" their way through because they expect to need or are hording for themselves, their spell slots. Another character went to 0HP because of their inaction.
Hi Sly! Thanks for these videos and for the lazy dungeon master. It has been a great read! I wanted to ask if you ever share the notion page with your players. I really wanted to use it to let my players navigate it as if it was a wiki, but I want to keep some world building to myself too. is it possible to do that?
@slyFlourish, my only annoyance I've found is when creating a link to something in my database, notion searches all my databases for all my campaigns, not just the database for the campaign I'm working in. Not sure if there's a solve for that.
@@jacoboblanco1555 That's what I've done to keep things straight when it shows search options. Just wish it would only show things locally, not all the databases. Since multiple campaigns have some similarly named villains or NPCs.
I use one database and then tags to assign to specific campaigns. If I share an entry to more than one campaign, I just make separate notes on the page for that entry.
Is this template or perhaps a "teamspace" a good way to deseminate information to the party? I've been using docs and such but the idea of making a spreadsheet with NPC info and images for everyone to reference has come up. I'm interested in using the template for my prep and my own use, but if I put all my info into this, can I share it and/or some modified version of it with the players? I've been running a game for going on 3 years and I just picked up Return of the Lazy DM and the Workbook, so I'm excited to use the tools you've come up with! Thanks for all the stuff you put out.
A DM friend used it to World Build and because of custom views, also finds it easy to run his homebrew campaign that uses the ongoing world building. Hope that encourages you?
In ROFLDM the treasure step is a magic item stem, so you have expanded this step to include all treasures ? Back to the topic, I use Evernote, is Notion better ?
I'm new to playing around with the Notion template. Does anyone know if there is a good way for me to prep my ideas in here and then share individual entries with my players as they discover them? It appeared to me like you either share the whole workspace or nothing at all.
Ok, not trying to sound stupid here, but when say copy the template off your website into Notion, are you saying copy-paste into Notion or are you saying recreate your template in Notion? If it’s the former, I’m having great difficulty because the the “pages” are just links to your Notion info (e.g., not the actual database template). Notion is new to me, I’ve watched the suggested videos, but I haven’t found that allows me to import your template into my Notion. I also posted this on your original video in 2020.
Hello! YOu have to duplicate the entire campaign notebook to your own account. Go to the top level and find the option to “duplicate” the entire notebook. You don’t have to copy every page. See Notion’s tutorials and instructions for more details.
Mike, thanks! I missed the ellipse in the upper right. I got it. This is great! This is much better than using Fantasy Grounds for campaign tracking and management. I use FG for encounters/combat but not as conducive for the Lazy GM style.
Been using this template for quite some time now and it's improved my planning so much, but one thing I've added is a page for solely random tables. Whenever my players reach a new major location or environment I'll spend half an hour making a random table of random flavor events that can occur when I need a prompt to make travel or downtime more interesting, and it's great to just have a page I can flick to easily.
I'm gonna start doing this. Great idea. And furthermore I wanna plop these into perchance for generation
This template has made everything about being a DM a breeze. I've been using it for a few years now and it absolutely rules.
Hi Mike! I've loved using this template for planning my sessions for the last year or two.
A couple of changes I've made that you might find interesting: I changed each heading to be a Toggle Heading, so I can collapse sections when I'm not using them and can quickly get to what I need.
I also gave each page an icon using emoji, which I just find visually more pleasing.
In one of my campaigns, I also set up the campaign database with different views for NPCs, Locations, Items, etc, rather than making separate pages with custom views. It allowed me to find what I wanted faster, and without leaving the page.
Take or leave any of these suggestions as you see fit. As always, thanks for the great resources!
Good ideas!
I just started using this in preparing for a new campaign I am starting soon. One thing I changed was the Character section. My group doesn't use D&D Beyond, we play using Roll20 and Discord only. So, the link column went. With that gone, I also realized that for me, reviewing the characters includes race and class/subclass/level. So, I added two columns, one for race, and another for class. This gives me all the things I think I'll need to review my player's characters as we play.
I’ve been using notion for work and daily stuff since a long time now and thought it would be ideal for dnd. Thanks for making this 😊
Just started using the template like a week ago and my goodness has it been a quality of life improvement.
Been using this and Owlbear Rodeo for a while now. Thanks for all these LAZY tips!
Stumbled across this template a couple months ago and have been using it for my current campaign. It's been a lifesaver and let's me run most of my game from my phone if I need to
This is what I needed. A step by step
This is my weekend sorted! I'm reaching the end of the first arc in my first campaign as a DM; the players are just about to finish the Sunless Citadel. Along with re-reading the Lazy books, I wanted to re-compile my notes ahead of the next arc and this tool & template look perfect. Thanks Mike!
It’s Mike’s fault I use Notion! Like most everything he recommends, it really helps plan and link tremendously! I’ll never go back to word for notes again!
I've been using your template for my last 60 D&D sessions. It's my third campaing using notion and is awesome. I also used your template for my worldbuilding, I'v added a Factions and Gods folder and removed the session notes, it's very useful, I'm not into complex tools with lot's of documents and configs, simple notion databases ans folder strucutre are great.
This is sweet! I added a multi select property in the characters page for tools because they are heavily used at my table.
Mind explaining what you mean by that? Curious but don't quite understand.
@@worldwalkers so in the table that you have for your players. I added a new column for their tool proficencies (like the one for languages and skills) and typed them in manually
@@chasemarkart6592 Thanks for the response! I’ve been doing database stuff on notion the past few days so I understand what you mean by “multi-select property” haha. Good idea!!
Hey Mike, I know my DM is currently looking for a new method to improve campaign management. So I send him your videos on Notion. It fits perfectly. One question remained open - how can you provide information easily to your players. It seems Notion does not offer quick access to information based on rights management. How do you do provide material and information to your players?
Might want to make the point this can work fine in obsidian too!
2 words. Game changer.
Thanks!
Thank you!
In a previous video you said you wished you added villains to your template? Where do you keep that? I added a Villains page but I feel like I agree they should just be in NPCs. My notes are getting to clunky.
I guess my real questions are how do you keep track of Fronts/villains? Do you add info to your villain page as things change in the game?
Yep. Just NPCs is fine.
I have a question on encounter benchmarks... Some people say something crazy like they are bassed on 6 encounters a day- but they don't have to be combat encounters. So any one encounter may qualify for Deadly. So, when you have 4 characters, are we assuming that they (between 4 of them) have around 12 limited resources (things that come back on a short or long rest) and two are spent each encounter.
I have a character that is underplayed. They are just trying to "Cantrip" their way through because they expect to need or are hording for themselves, their spell slots. Another character went to 0HP because of their inaction.
I think I knew how to do all of this stuff already but... Is that a dark mode? Oooh.
Hi Sly! Thanks for these videos and for the lazy dungeon master. It has been a great read!
I wanted to ask if you ever share the notion page with your players. I really wanted to use it to let my players navigate it as if it was a wiki, but I want to keep some world building to myself too.
is it possible to do that?
@slyFlourish, my only annoyance I've found is when creating a link to something in my database, notion searches all my databases for all my campaigns, not just the database for the campaign I'm working in. Not sure if there's a solve for that.
You can rename the campaign db page to include the campaign name.
@@jacoboblanco1555 That's what I've done to keep things straight when it shows search options. Just wish it would only show things locally, not all the databases. Since multiple campaigns have some similarly named villains or NPCs.
I use one database and then tags to assign to specific campaigns. If I share an entry to more than one campaign, I just make separate notes on the page for that entry.
The main database is huge, but the custom views are clean.
Yes. This is what I do. Give every database a unique name.
Is this template or perhaps a "teamspace" a good way to deseminate information to the party? I've been using docs and such but the idea of making a spreadsheet with NPC info and images for everyone to reference has come up. I'm interested in using the template for my prep and my own use, but if I put all my info into this, can I share it and/or some modified version of it with the players?
I've been running a game for going on 3 years and I just picked up Return of the Lazy DM and the Workbook, so I'm excited to use the tools you've come up with! Thanks for all the stuff you put out.
Would you also recommend notion for world building/would a "still in development" database be a worthy addition?
A DM friend used it to World Build and because of custom views, also finds it easy to run his homebrew campaign that uses the ongoing world building. Hope that encourages you?
In ROFLDM the treasure step is a magic item stem, so you have expanded this step to include all treasures ?
Back to the topic, I use Evernote, is Notion better ?
what about monster stat blocks?
I'm new to playing around with the Notion template. Does anyone know if there is a good way for me to prep my ideas in here and then share individual entries with my players as they discover them? It appeared to me like you either share the whole workspace or nothing at all.
How do you add region maps or world maps with links?
Nice
Ok, not trying to sound stupid here, but when say copy the template off your website into Notion, are you saying copy-paste into Notion or are you saying recreate your template in Notion? If it’s the former, I’m having great difficulty because the the “pages” are just links to your Notion info (e.g., not the actual database template). Notion is new to me, I’ve watched the suggested videos, but I haven’t found that allows me to import your template into my Notion. I also posted this on your original video in 2020.
Hello! YOu have to duplicate the entire campaign notebook to your own account. Go to the top level and find the option to “duplicate” the entire notebook. You don’t have to copy every page. See Notion’s tutorials and instructions for more details.
Mike, thanks! I missed the ellipse in the upper right. I got it. This is great! This is much better than using Fantasy Grounds for campaign tracking and management. I use FG for encounters/combat but not as conducive for the Lazy GM style.